Category: The Dungeon World Tavern: Compendium Classes

True Names #WizardWeek

When you hear your True Name spoken aloud for the first time, the next time you level up you make take this move:

TRUE NAMER: When you study a specific person or entity in an attempt to learn their true names, roll +INT. On a 10+, the GM will tell you a question about your subject you must find the answer to. On a 7-9, three questions. When you learn the answers, you know enough information to deduce their True Name. On a miss, you still get three questions, but they’re going to be hard ones.

True Names, on their own, are very useful in Rituals targeting that person or entity, even across great or even interplanar distances. Also, certain True Names are valuable and can be traded or used as leverage in dealing with certain classes of wizards or planar beings.

Once you have TRUE NAMER, the following moves become class moves for you.

NAME MAGIC: You may prepare any spell or spells with a specific target as if they were one level lower. If you do so, you may only cast these spells on targets whose True Names you know.

THE LESSER ART: When you make eye or skin contact with someone, you learn the name they were given at birth, as well as any other names, nicknames, titles, or epithets they recognize as their own. Take +1 forward to parley with them.

BY ANY OTHER: When you give someone a new (common) name, roll +INT. Take -2 if you do not know their True Name. On a 10+, choose two, on a 7-9, choose one:

 – Any other names they have had besides the one you have given them, including attempts to create new names, will be quickly forgotten, and any physical evidence of these other names will become lost or misplaced.

 – NPCs will instinctively call them by the new name, even if nobody tells them about it. It simply seems intuitively obvious.

 – If the new name is descriptive in some way (“Sven the Coward” or “One-Eye” perhaps) it will be perceived as accurate regardless of the truth of the situation.

Anywhere the old name is written down (character sheets, Bonds, GM notes), immediately cross it off and write the new name down in its place.

RHYMING SCHEME: When you learn someone’s True Name, ask their player what they identify most strongly as (perhaps race, class, or some personality trait). Take +1 forward to learn the True Name of anyone who shares that trait, regardless of how strongly they feel themselves defined by it.

At level 6-10, you make take the following move:

INVOCATION: When you forcefully speak someone’s True Name aloud, you create a temporary Place of Power which may only be used for Rituals which affect the person named, and which only lasts for long enough to complete a single Ritual. When you do this, the person or entity so named feels it in their bones and soul, and instinctively knows the location (direction, distance, and if necessary plane) of this Place of Power for as long as it is extant.